What is the biggest danger of renting and managing my own home?

Today’s question is, what is the biggest danger about renting and managing my own house?

So, you know, if you’re a owner and you’re thinking, “Hey, I’m going to rent my house. What are some dangers I should look out for?”

First thing I would say is, choosing the wrong tenant.

I mean, this is where it kind of starts and ends. Choosing the wrong tenant can be really bad.

I really believe that tenants look and seek out kind of unprofessional landlords to rent from because they know that they don’t do background checks.

They know they don’t know what to look for. They know they don’t look at their credit. So, I’d be really careful about that and make sure that I’m screening the tenant and make sure that I know that I’m putting a good tenant in my house.

The second one I would say is, state tenant and landlord specific laws.

So, each state typically has a uniform residential landlord tenant law.

And it basically governs how your relationship with tenant goes. So, just because you don’t know the law exists or you don’t know there’s a law does not mean you’re not responsible for following it.

I would make sure that I got a copy of that and make sure I read that all the way through.

And so, a lot of times if you only have one or two houses, you don’t have the leverage that we have with most maintenance vendors.

We actually own our own maintenance company, so in most cases we have all the leverage but you got to watch out for that if you only have one or two tenant repairs not getting done will typically leave a tenant frustrated and give you a lot of turnover.